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Church planter Nathan Hedt will be LCA/NZ’s next Pastor for New and Renewing Churches.
Pastor Nathan, who has served the Lakeside church plant at Pakenham in outer suburban Melbourne for the past six years, will take up the role early in 2021. He succeeds Rev Dr Noel Due, who is retiring after being in the position since January 2018 and having been a mentor to Pastor Nathan.
Pastor Nathan will remain based in Melbourne for his new post, which also includes managing the New and Renewing Churches Department of the LCA/NZ’s Local Mission office. While he will be sad to leave Pakenham, he believes God has been preparing him for the new challenge.
‘I think God’s been shaping me towards a role like this for a while’, he said. ‘The church-planting experience is really difficult but is also incredibly joyful and has been really good in shaping me towards this. My heart of an evangelist which wants people to hear and understand the good news for themselves is important in this. And I think also I have an ability to teach and to convey some of the excitement and the content about evangelism and church planting.’
LCA/NZ Executive Officer for Local Mission Dr Tania Nelson said she was excited to have Pastor Nathan join the team in a fulltime capacity.
‘I know God has been at work developing in Nathan the skills required for furthering and inspiring the church-planting movement in the LCA/NZ’, she said. ‘He comes to us with a heart for God’s mission, a good understanding of church planting in action, membership of the former interim Board for Local Mission and the current Committee for New and Renewing Churches and post-grad studies in mission.’
She also paid tribute to Pastor Noel’s service. ‘Noel has been an integral part of the growth in the LCA’s church-planting movement’, she said. ‘He has been a coach, trainer and pastor to many. We thank God for his pastoral care, his theological insights, his wise shepherding and wonderful contribution to local mission resources.’
Married to Yvette with three young adult daughters, Pastor Nathan was ordained as a pastor in the LCA in December 2003. He served Nambour parish on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast from 2004 to 2008, before becoming Pastor for Tertiary and Youth Ministry for the Victoria-Tasmania District from 2008 to 2014.
The General Church Board (GCB) has approved moves to improve the ‘efficiency and transparency’ of the LCA/NZ’s call process.
Following a decision by the 2015 General Convention of Synod, the then General Church Council (now GCB) commissioned an investigation into the LCA call process in order to hear from congregations about their views and expectations of the process and to identify ways the system could be improved.
The report ‘A Review of the Call Process of the Lutheran Church of Australia’ was completed in July 2018. GCB now has responded to the report, including approving actions designed in collaboration with the College of Bishops (CoB) to improve the process.
The general conclusions of the report were that:
- The call process was under stress
- Parishes believed the process was inadequate, but could be improved, rather than replaced
- Bishops and directors of mission generally reported satisfaction with the current call process, but indicated that it could be improved
- The call process of the LCA already allows for a variety of practices, but that neither parishes nor bishops and directors of mission are aware of the full range of variants available, and
- Expectation management is important for the call process to function well and for the reduction of levels of mistrust and frustration.
The LCA/NZ’s Secretary of the Church, Dr Nigel Long, said the review made a number of recommendations, though overall it found that the system did ‘not require significant structural change’.
‘However, it did identify that there is frustration about the system and a process that can be disheartening for some calling bodies’, he said. ‘As a result, the review also identified scope for improvement in the efficiency and transparency of the process.
‘GCB has received the report, considered its recommendations and approved a series of actions to implement them. These actions were developed in consultation with the College of Bishops. Some of them are already under development; for example, Church Worker Support is working on a framework for annual vocational reviews of pastors.’
Dr Long said the actions were focused on supporting both calling bodies and pastors to:
- improve trust in the call process
- increase the chances of a good calling body/pastor fit
- improve the understanding of how the call process works, and
- ensure greater professionalism, and overall efficiency and transparency in the system.
He said the approved actions could be ‘implemented through policy, operational processes and provision of resources to support all participants in the call system’. They would not require a synodical decision.
GCB’s response to the recommendations of the review report is available online through the LCA website here.
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